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Arkansas lawmakers ban most abortions at a pregnancy's 12th week

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Sen. Jason Rapert, right, greets Sen. Bobby J. Pierce on the floor of the Arkansas Senate in Little Rock, Ark.. The state legislature voted this week to override a veto of a law Rapert sponsored that would ban most abortions from the 12th week of pregnancy onward.
(Photo by The Associated Press)

. . . doctors who perform abortions on a woman who is more than 12 weeks pregnant will lose their medical licenses unless the woman is a victim of rape or incest, her life is in danger or the fetus has a highly lethal abnormality.

It goes into force 90 days after the legislature adjourns, Politico said.

Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, had vetoed the law on Monday, saying it violated the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. That 1973 ruling protected a woman's right to an abortion until the fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks into pregnancy.

The state Senate had voted Tuesday to override Beebe's veto, followed the next day by the House. Republicans control both bodies. Some House Democrats joined Republicans in Wednesday's override vote.

The override was a victory for a growing faction within the anti-abortion movement that has grown tired of trying to chip away at Roe v. Wade, The New York Times noted:

“When is enough enough?” asked the bill’s sponsor in the legislature, Sen. Jason Rapert, a Republican, who compared the more than 50 million abortions in the United States since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. “It’s time to take a stand.”

Politico quoted a Republican representative, Ann Clemmer, who said the law makes “a 12-week-old baby in utero a person … [whose] life is to be protected not only from a third party, but from a mother herself.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is expected to join with the Center for Reproductive Rights, a abortion rights group, to oppose the new law in court. Before the House vote, Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, told Politico:

“We are preparing the papers to go to court as we speak. In fact, we’ve been working on them since the bill was filed . . . It is flat-out unconstitutional. … it would be the most extreme, severe abortion law in the country.”

Arkansas lawmakers acted while New York considers a proposed "Reproductive Health Act" that Gov. Andrew Cuomo made part of his Women's Equality Agenda in January's State of the State message.

Critics claim the act would expand New York's abortion rights. The governor's office argues that Cuomo is seeking to align New York law with federal law and existing practice in the state.

Do you think New York should follow Arkansas lead? Leave a comment below.